Reliability of the Bible

The Bible is the most reliable
collection of writings in human history. There is no other document
that even comes close to the plethora of ancient copies that the
Bible has supporting it. Both the Old and New Testaments have a
ridiculous amount of evidence supporting their reliability compared
to other ancient historical documents.

Determining Reliability of Ancient
Documents

When determining the reliability of an ancient
document, histories ask a few important questions:

Dating of the Text: How close to the
original date of authorship are the available copies?

Number of Copies: How many ancient
copies do we have? How accurate are they compared to each other?

Outside Sources: Can the ancient text
be validated from outside sources that quoted the manuscript?

Reliability of the Bible: Old Testament

In the 1940's when the Dead Sea
Scrolls were discovered, it included multiple copies of the virtually
every Old Testament book of the Bible, all dated prior to the
beginning of Christianity.

This discovery answered an important
question that had been asked by both the non-religious and religious:
Is the current Bible the same as the ancient Bible?

What was discovered was that the
Christian Church had preserved the Old Testament with basically
perfect accuracy. Minor misspellings in the ancient text, or omission
of non-essential words, were the only minor differences. Over
95% of the entire text was exactly the same with the other 5% being
misspellings, differences in word order, and minor omissions of insignificant words,
etc.

However, in terms of copies and
quotations from outside sources, the New Testament has even more evidence supporting its reliability than the Old Testament.

Reliability of the Bible: New Testament

The New Testament has thousands of
ancient copies in multiple languages that support its reliability.

Not
only that, but the New Testament was quoted by so many early
Christian writers that it could easily be reconstructed simply from
the quotations. The primary issue with the New Testament has never been
reliability. Even the existence of Jesus Christ is not a matter of question.
His existence is confirmed in the texts of non-biblical
historians.

The real question is not
whether the New Testament is reliable, or whether Jesus
existed. The real question is whether it is true about what it says
regarding Jesus Christ.

The New Testament is a collection of numerous
authors who collectively make very bold claims about God, Jesus
Christ, and other religious subjects such as salvation.